NGN Forum & IMS Forum Expands Its Plugfest Series

By Michael Khalilian

The NGN IMS Forum, the only industry association dedicated to interoperability and certification of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation Networks (NGN) applications and services, has announced that that its seventh IMS/NGN Plugfest will be held June 1-5, 2009 at the InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) in Durham, NH. The NGN IMS Forum Plugfests are the industry’s only interoperability events covering NGN services over 3G, LTE, WiMAX, wireline and cable broadband.

The Plugfest 7 will cover all types of interfaces used in IMS, NGN, LTE and WiMAX utilizing Diameter for control and management, network operations (OSS/BSS) and integration with NGN applications and services. The event will address the needs of protocol stack vendors and users, equipment vendors using Diameter in functions such as Call Session Control, Home Subscriber Servers, Charging, Policy Management, and Security. Diameter is an Internet (IETF) protocol developed to strengthen security and augment functionality of RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) and to deliver AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) functionality in Next Generation Networks. Together Diameter and the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) support the delivery of voice, video, text and multimedia in NGN, or “all IP networks”.

With this Plugfest we continue to expand further into service delivery, the control and management, including billing, protocols and standards according to NGN, LTE and IMS architecture and framework. Plugfest 7 is a continuation of the IMS Plugfest series that started two years ago.

Forum membership and Plugfest participation is open to all companies. For online registration and info contact the forum at: info@imsforum.org or visit www.NGNforum.org.

Michael Khalilian is the Chairman and President of the NGN Forum™ & IMS Forum® (www.NGNForum.org, info@NGNForum.org).

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